The Hard Truth
by Atheniandream
Summary: Valentine's Day's Fic. SORRY ITS LATE! One Shot.


_Notes: Little Late Valentine's fic for everybody. Have the week off, so going hell to leather with the updates. (So excited for this Next Ep I feel loads of impotus for fic coming up!)_

**_RE-BETA'D*** As of 17.02.15_**

* * *

**The Hard Truth**

"_This was a...bad idea." She s__aid__, panting, as she grab__bed__ for a pillow to cover herself__, __lean__ing __back into the couch. Her hands flatten__ed__ out across the __l__eather, her eyes roam__ing __the light peppered ceiling._

_Beside her, he copie__d__ the action, relaxing into position... "A...very bad idea." He pant__ed__, a bemused look on his face._

"_So…" She pout__ed slightly__, pushing the air out of her mouth. "What now?" She ask__ed__, her eyes still trained on anything but him._

"_I…." He drag__ged__ on the vowel. "...I don't know."_

* * *

14 hours previous...

* * *

Above_ all other _occasions_..._

Donna Paulsen _hated_ Valentine's Day.

About five years ago, long after long term relationships, she'd deliberately stopped going out on this one day, specifically.

Of course, she still dated - frequently and often without prejudice - but after years of countless, gradually mounting bad date experiences on that notable 14th of the month; she had decided that 'going stag' was much more liberating than pretending to make the effort with a stranger on the so called one romantic date in the calendar.

She was far too old and wizened from the dating scene to even make the effort these days. Heck, she'd sustained emotional whiplash from the last relationship alone.

Therefore, what now best accompanied her on this day, could fit into a bottle, and on a rare occasion would be delivered by a fellow single girlfriend, for a night of rather sobering avoidance of the fact that she was still - into her forties - single and alone.

No matter what witty retort she could summon up, or feminine empowered tirade she had waiting in the wings, it was now very much a fact of her own life.

And this year… after this year, the date seemed to loom like no other.

Thought's of Stephen flickered in her periphery, causing her to shake her head slightly to dash the thought.

Her eyes flicked up just in time to spy Harvey witnessing such an action. He lent back slightly, observing her strangeness as he looked down at her. "You okay?" He asked, amused.

"I'm Fine." She defended, shaking off his words with a flick of her hair.

"Sure you are." He smirked walking past her.

She noticed him start to walk before pausing, the whiff of a thought in the air, before he continued down the hall. She frowned immediately.

No doubt Harvey had a date.

Harvey, in direct contradiction to her, _always_ had a date on Valentine's.

She always wondered if he saved the best till last, like a list of the city's most rising stars, like he ticked them consecutively off in August of the previous year only to end up with the hottest youngest and stupidest one saved for this very special day. She wondered idly if he perhaps worked financial year to financial year or the usual calendar method.

She had noted that from early on in their professional career, he went from dating regular women, beautiful but slightly stupid and sometimes serious, to barely serious at all and somehow always stupid.

Until Scottie.

She wondered how he would have treated Valentine's with Scottie after the 'Scotch' debacle.

_Would he have come to her with questions on the best gift before she picked one out?_

Her eyes focused then on the little clock in the corner of her screen. The Sun's long gone down and there was still a sharp wind in the city. She's thankful that there's only about fifty minutes until the end of the day, hoping very much to drone into the last half hour with a vague recollection of where she is, perhaps zone out for fifteen minutes to cut the time in half…

It's a minute to before she's up and out of her seat, sauntering into his darkened office. She spied him on the couch, and frowned at the alarming amount of paperwork around his seated form.

"You building a fort in here?" She quipped, observing the strange sight. "You realise it's seven thirty, right?" She checked.

It was unusual for him to be here at this time on such a notable occasion.

"Mhmm." He hummed in agreement, leaning back and picking out a page from the stack in front of him.

"And this is?" She queried, gesturing at all the paperwork fanned around him.

As far as she was aware he had no impending cases. Nothing that needed to get off the ground, anyway. For the first time in a while, she had no idea what was going on with him.

"The Meyers-Cortlins Merger." He replied half-heartedly.

"But that's not for another two weeks? Who you trying to impress?" She pressed, her interest piquing.

"Maybe I just want to get a jump on it." He said matter-of-factly, his expression folding slightly as she continued her pointed concentration.

"Harvey...it's _Valentine's day_." She reasoned, her arms twitching at her sides in a half-flap, as if trying to awaken him to the poignant calendar date she would rather soon forget.

"Yeah...shouldn't you be dolled up and ready to go?" He asked, leaning back observe her. "Some guy...some where?"

She noted the way a subtext lingered in his bistre coloured eyes; one that somehow didn't seem to touch the playful sound in his voice.

"Actually, Uh...No." She said. It was hard not to notice the way his expression sharpened with an odd interest. She continued. "After the year I've had, I am pointedly opting out of the dating pool on this one occasion." She added a light to her voice then, in sensing that sudden heaviness hanging in her. "And _your _excuse?"

He shrugged non-committally. "Does getting old count?" He remarked, a slight twinkle in his eye. It was an unusual response for a man who was usually the first to defend his unwavered vigour and zest for life.

But then again, he had been doing a lot of parenting lately. What with the two little boys under his wing - one far to old to be considered a little boy unless you knew him - and that was bound to leave a mark.

"Harvey…." She sighed, a pity reaching her eyes at the sight of her rather accomplished and somewhat attractive Boss's horrific excuse for an evening. "Go home. Or out. Anywhere but here." She ordered, folding her arms as she made to leave.

"Okay." He agrees, folding the file on his lap. "Only if you come with me." He fires the words at her. Direct, withheld and somehow a touch come hither about them.

She scoffed. "I am not going to your apartment on Valentine's day. Or...anywhere else for that matter." She warned, giving him a stern look.

"Have you even been to my apartment?" He asked, side-stepping her comment.

"Not with you there." She admitted.

She had been to his apartment dozens of times of the years, but when you considered the many years it wasn't much. The occasional suit gather and pick up and sign for things coming to his apartment. She had made sure that when she agreed to work for him that there was a line drawn. She would not frequent his apartment. And there was a good reason for that particular rule, especially with Harvey in their earlier years together.

"Come on." He pushed, and pout forming and his eyes narrowing. "We can get some wine. I'll cook something. I'll have you tucked up in bed by twelve."

"I don't think so!" She laughs the words, shaking her head at his insistence.

"You won't miss a wink, I promise." He says then.

She smiled, amused and all the while taken aback be his proposal. She hid the latter feeling like a true professional. "That has to be the worst line ever uttered by any man." She admonished, trying to look unperturbed by his mood.

"Jessica eats at mine." He threw at her then.

"Is that a euphemism?" She played, trying to disarm him.

"What if it was? You jealous?"

"Yeah. Let's not get into your inappropriate Jessica fantasies." She said, throwing him a look as she glances out into the hall.

"Don't tell me you wouldn't." He played, smirking like the devil. "Come on." He pleaded, an almost croon in his voice. "Look, either shitty take out here, or a home cooked meal. Your call. But where ever you go..." His sentence trailed off, as he pointed to himself.

He used to do this. Offer up time together. Almost force it on her with those big puppy dog eyes and youthful optimism. It happened countless times, back when they first started working at the firm. When things were fresh and he could still probably recount her nakedness in detail. How many freckles she had. The sound she had made under his well practised hands.

She tried to pick apart his reasoning with her toothcomb of a resolve.

_But __it __really ha__d__ been a crappy year... _

* * *

She wasn't sure why she accepted.

Something about a shitty year for both of them…perhaps a little to do with his rather alien insistence. One that seemed to be reoccurring gradually.

"Fine. Just one meal."

"And wine?" He inferred.

"Of course Wine, this isn't a monastery." She scoffed, rolling her eyes.

"I'm sure they have wine in-"

"Nevermind," She cut off his words, shaking her head.

* * *

She felt out of touch, sat in his apartment. She noted to herself that somehow, in some place that made sense, she was behaving; sat on one side of the island counter top, her arms held at her sides and a glass of wine perched on the counter in front of her, as he stood on the other side, chopping things and stirring things idly with his sleeves rolled up casually to the elbow.

She watched the way his hands moved fluidly between the two tasks. She didn't miss the fact that he never looked at her once. The fact put her on a knife edge.

"You know...I didn't know you could cook?" She remarked, cutting the palpable silence that in and of itself seemed...again, alien. Like it stirred up something in the air long since ignored and forgotten about.

"Yeah." He answered quietly. "Scottie." A one-word answer with so many inferences.

_It's enough for her not to ask again._

She didn't know what tact to take, a strange feeling in her gut at that one word whilst her brain lingered over details she'd rather not identify.

"So, what are you making for me?" She asked then, sitting up as she sipped her red wine; feeling that bitter tang on her tongue and the fire of hunger in her belly.

"_**For us**_, I'm making Penne Arrabiatta and Chicken with...something...mozzarella-y in it." He reamed off, looking pointedly at her as he grabbed a tea towel, the emerging sizzle of onions hitting hot oil in a pan behind him.

"And what? You just happened to have this around your apartment?" She questioned, a disbelieving look on her face.

She wasn't entirely sure why she felt the need to grill him. As if a nervousness had her on edge when really she should actually have been relaxing and enjoying a man actually making something for her and catering to her. She wondered for a fraction of a second if it was because it was Harvey who was the man in question.

She took a larger sip this time, drowning the anxiety and open thought.

"You okay in there? You know, prohibition's been lifted in the city for at least the last fifty-" He paused for effect, making a point as he sipped his own glass of wine, a playful look hiding the slight concern on his face.

"Ha. Funny." She chided. "You've sat me here, with only wine, you're doing everything. _What am I supposed to do?__"  
_She shrugged.

"Admire the view?" He joked then, gesturing at himself with an arrogant swagger.

She ignored him, continuing. "It's just...I don't think this have ever happened before."

"I _know_ it hasn't." He remarked with a smirk.

"No..I mean you...doing something...for _**me**_." She pointed out.

"Well...we're not at work. And I was hungry. And you didn't want to go out, so. " He shrugged, turning his concentration back to the onions.

"Yeah, I think I already made a pretty strong defence against that one." She defended.

He turned around, leaned in, just slightly in between actions. "Then, you're just going to have to sit there, watch me cook and not get drunk."

"No fair. Besides being a kick ass assistant _and _agony aunt, that's at least my fourth best talent." She replied, pouting somewhat.

"Your fourth?" His eyebrows raised then, a questioning look on his interested face.

"Yes. Fourth. And no I will _not _divulge." She said smugly.

He smirked, his defined lip quirking. "I'm warning you, Donna Roberta Paulsen. As far as red wine goes, I _will_ cut you off." He warned, a fathering note in his eyes.

"Three glasses." She offered, trying to strike a deal.

"Two glasses."

"Two glasses, one Whiskey," She gambled, an expectant look on her face.

"Deal." He agreed then, going back to the stove.

She smiled satisfactorily.

Their little moment managed, thankfully, to lift the tension from her form. Either that or the first glass had really started to kick in...she wondered on the latter, swivelling on the seat of her barstool to examine his apartment, low lit, as she assumed it always was in the evenings; the black and white cushions on the couch, reflective surfaces in long lines and the city skyline flooding the entire open plan room.

She forgot that he lived here. She often felt like they both lived at the firm, in the clothes that they were still in now. Seeing him, his relationship to the kitchen, the front door, the apartment gave him a difference, _a clarity_. Even when they did, on occasion eat dinner together there was always work in the air and an air about him that stayed the fact.

She never thought about being on the other side. _This side_. This part of his life. Domesticity that she thought didn't exist at all.

The sudden smell of garlic and tomatoes mixing in the pan provided an aroma that made her mouth water and the taste of the wine increase four fold.

_For a horrific evening, this alternative __was__...surprisingly enjoyable__..._

If it wasn't with her Boss it would almost be perfect.

When she turned back to him he was leaning against the counter opposite, facing her, the sound of a grill now buzzing in the background, the burgundy wine in his glass sloshing about as he took a sip. His eyes found hers, another undefinable look hidden in them.

"What?" She asked, picking up her own glass with a self-concious frown.

"Nothing." He said, an innocence painting his face as he shook his head, dismissing her question and putting down his glass to continue cooking.

'_Where do we go from here. _

_Where do we go? _

_And is it real _

_Or just something we think we know'_

"I'm glad things at the firm are...settled now. Louis and Mike are friends. You and Mike are friends. _You and Louis are_…"

"Friends." He admitted, chuckling to himself. "Who'd have thought." He said, turning back to the food.

"Hardman ruined you two from the start." She offered.

"That asshole," He said, the mere mention of his former Boss's name getting his dander up. "He never fucking liked me. He didn't like anyone."

"He knew you'd take his place one day. And you gave Jessica ammo. Why would he like you?" She added, sipping a little more from her glass.

"I suppose. I guess every name pushes the last one out." He mused, tempered by the thought of such a notion.

"You know...it doesn't have to, Harvey." Her words opened like a push, her fingers mapping around the stem of her glass.

"Meaning?"

"Pearson Specter Litt _&amp; Ross_?" She offered, a smile on her face.

"You're kidding, right?" His face dropped, becoming immediately stern.

"We're now officially a club. It's the next logical step." She defended.

"Yeah. Not for another six imaginary years!" He said, gawping at her. "Donna..._Mike is Mike_ but...he's a fraud. Let's not forget that fact." He said.

"So, what? He's...never getting there?"

"I'm not saying that, but. But..._name on the wall_? I know we've taken to pissing in the street lately, but even that's a step too far, don't you think?"

"He deserves it, Harvey. Even now. He's done _a lot_ for the firm."

"And the firms done a lot for him. Hell, he's a lawyer now! He has to earn that like the rest of us."

"Like the rest?" She asks incredulously.

"Okay, maybe not exactly like us. But...he'll do it. In time." He said, stirring and simultaneously folding chicken around mozzarella and basil. "With any luck we'll have all retired and then he can take the wheel at his own risk without taking all of us down with him."

"You? Retire?" She scoffs, gulping her wine. "Never thought I'd ever hear you say that word." She admitted, taken a back.

He'd finally started to grow. More than her, it seemed.

"What about you?" He asked.

_What about her, indeed._

She sat forward then, an indulgence about her. "_**I**_...am going to wait until a rich investment banker finds me and then I'm...going to live like Julia Roberts does in Pretty Woman. The end part, of course... Not a huge fan of thigh high vinyl." She added.

He smiled instantly.

"No 'screw the being a Hooker part', it's the clothes that you're not a fan of..." He remarked, chuckling to himself.

"Hey... should my life have gone down that route I'm sure I would have been a fabulous 'Belle Du Jour'." She smiles proudly.

"Time's a ticking, Donna." He warned pointedly.

She didn't know what he was inferring, and there was wasn't time to, the flood of cooking meat flooding her nostrils.

"_And that chicken is a' cookin__'_." She pointed out, noticing the bubbling chicken in the oven with a scrunch of the face.

"Shit," He muttered under his breath, swiftly grabbing at an oven mitt to take the tray safely out of the oven.

Before he knew it she was beside him, stirring the unattended sauce and taking the pasta off of the heat. He smiled at her actions, before placing a deliberate, scolding frown on his face, his hand reaching for the spatula in hers. "Oh no, I've tasted your cooking! Get the hell out of my kitchen!" He ordered, a faked annoyance on his face as she glided away on heelless feet.

"Fine, Fine." She relented, before turning back around. "But, I'm stealing your liquor." She baited him, heading to where she knew - for a fact - that there was a hefty amount of scotch, untouched by her hands.

And it was his fault she even drank the stuff. She remembered, all those years ago, as he sat on the desk, leaning over her, handing her a glass of liquid victory paint stripper with a dash of honey in it; that acrid taste and the heavy fume that she swallowed down because he had been the one to give it to her.

_Then he__ had pointedly__ offered to go down on her __ with whipped cream __and suddenly the idea of Scotch had been something she could__ very much __get used to if it came with that kind of offer__ each time__.__.._

It had been a welcomed alternative to stave off his advances of such a brazen proposal.

And he had been so good at it, if she recalled correctly.

Dinner was fabulous, even if the mozzarella was a little toasted. He was a remarkably good cook at Scottie's hands. She felt sad for a moment at their faded union; one of his longest standing connections now snapped in half. Before long she was suddenly wondering why_ she_ was here; watching him perch on the end of the couch, instead of Dana.

"Don't I get a couch to myself?" She asked, the humour in her eyes belaying the nervousness at his sudden closeness.

"We've always sat on the same couch?" He defended, questioning her with a look.

"Only because there's only one couch in your office. _Believe me,_ I tried to get two in there."

He brushed off her humour, leaning forward with the kind of look he hadn't given her in such a long time it caused her to shut her mouth instantly. "What you so scared of happening here?" He asked, a flare of interest in his eyes.

Her eyes widened when he leaned over towards her, edging closer, before he abruptly adjusted, reaching to pick up her glass. She was lighting fast then, a strange squirm in her gut as she scrambled to grab the glass of liquid that sloshed between them. "Don't you dare!" She reprimanded, as he let her take the glass.

"Do you want another drink?" He asked, that shit-eating grin on his face that she'd misjudged his motives.

She frowned against a well placed flush, taking it like a man as she handed him her glass. "Yes please." She said evenly, begrudgingly watching him get up and wander over to the mini bar.

She let out a sigh, trying to relax out, her fingers twitching as she tried to shake off whatever has her on edge. There was something so wrong about her being here on this day that it was starting to tie her up in knots no matter what she threw in her stomach.

He handed her the drink then, sliding past the coffee table to sit down, leaning back in the cushions with a sigh.

She noticed the look her gave her; something playing in the periphery of his mind that he had been keeping to himself all day, it seemed.

"What?" She questioned, placing her drink on the glass coaster to churn up some much needed control.

"I've never seen you look so...nervous before." He said, entertained by the notion.

"Nervous of what?" She defended, her eyebrows sharpening in parallel to the cliff like hole in her stomach.

"Exactly." He said, as if her reply only backed up his statement all the more.

"Well. It's Valentine's day. I'm at _my Boss's_ house. He's cooked me dinner. He's getting me drunk..." She reamed off.

"Oh, I think you accomplishing the latter all by yourself." He remarked, visibly enjoying her.

"And you seem to think it's unusual this...nervousness,"

"Donna." He said her name solid and with a grounding to it that cut the room. "Since the other time...I've never...once, come onto you." He says, sitting up. "Have I?"

Her immediately questioning face had him expanding with an. "Except that time after. And it wasn't even like we did it, we just..." As he rolled his eyes, his defence waning. "Kissed."

He was right. He hadn't. And they had...just. And she had cut it off and he had agreed. And if anything, he'd never so much as even inferred anything since the other time..._and that one other little time..._

**_And right now she was a literal mess tied up in an eight hundred dollar dress and drowned in about two hundred dollars worth of expensive wine and scotch..._**

"Harvey, you're right…I" She said then, a defeated sigh. "This is...I'm stupid, I just. It's been a very hard year. With Stephen, and the trial and the name changes and...I just, _it's all_..." She flicked her hand for emphasis.

Suddenly she was at a loss for words. Out of them, in fact. She sighed heavily, chewing on her bottom lip.

"Donna...we've all been through a lot." He nodded, looking out over the skyline.

She was animated then, and more like herself with a drink-led flippancy. "Let's just...watch a film and get drunk like friends do?" She offered, a lightness catching her.

"Sounds good to me," He agreed warmly, his dark eyes following her sauntering form out to where the Scotch was not quite so hidden.

She reasoned that she _didn't_ see it coming.

That in and of itself was and still is a flat out lie.

Fact was, he was so much better at what he did than she ever held in memory, and she was starting to wear thin under the weight of it all.

'_Where are we going now, _

_Where do we go? _

_Coz if it's the same as yesterday, _

_I'm out, Just so you know. _

_Because, Because _

_Our paths, They crossed.'_

"Could you stop fidgeting for just one second?" He asked, a slight irk in his voice as he observed her.

"I've been tied up in this dress for nearly twenty hours, Harvey. This is_ not_ couch-wear." She fidgeted. Having found that the coffee table was cold she ended up poked up in the corner of the couch like some cat.

"Do you want some sweats?" He asked her, observing her awkward and slightly drunken posture.

"No, Thank you." She said, folding her arms.

_At forty, this was not the most comfortable position to be in. But she wasn't just about to put on her Bosses clothes. _

"Give me em'." He ordered tiredly, having spent the last twenty minutes listening to her shuffle over the sound of whatever science fiction movie was half entertaining him on his flatscreen. It was now time to resolve the issue.

She looked at him, an accusation on her lips that he interrupted. "Just lay your legs out." He said, the obviousness of such an idea blunt in his voice as he looked expectantly at her.

"No touching." She warned.

"Just do it." He ordered, harder this time and giving her a look to go with it that somehow in all it's potency laid out who was the boss in the room.

She squinted at him, a suspicion on her lips, before slowly straightening out on the couch, her eyes trained solely on him as she did so. She felt every muscle hallelujah as she relaxed onto the couch again, tucking her dress under her. She tried to ignore the feeling as his hands rested on her legs, seemingly unperturbed by having her draped all over him.

It made her uneasy. It was ridiculous how _only he_ could make her feel like this. Uneasy and younger...it was ridiculous to the nth degree and she perhaps hail a cab now and save them both the awkwardness.

She soon drifted into a comfortable daze, watching the fast moving action on the screen, her eyes occasionally flicking to his relaxed form, half obscured by the dark, until his chiselled features peek out under intermittent flashes of obscured colour and form.

For a just a fraction of a second they were a couple. It was any normal night, tired and full and content and slightly drunk, just watching television together.

She'll always tell people that it was _him_. _His fault_… **not** hers.

He looked to her, jutting his head back at her sudden proximity to him, sat up and close and staring rather directly at him. He took her in, every little bit of her in a flash, a mixture of thoughts and the mounting confusion on his face. "Donna, what-"

"Shut up." She demanded, her hand falling on to his cheek. For a second she thought about backing out but then his eyes roped hers in and all she _could_ do was press her lips slowly and softly against his.

She felt it in his entire being, this push and pull. On the one hand he'd come alive, a hand on her calf as her legs laid completely over his, and yet this starkness of shock making his actions and reactions tempered. He suddenly sat a little straighter, his chest a little broader, the hand that slid on to her calf idly now sliding deliberately all the way up to her waist, his lips basil tasting and whiskey tinged and slightly moist against hers. The other hand fell into her hair then, smoothing over her neck and then around the back of her head as he deepened the kiss, moaning slightly, a gravelly sound, low and somehow warm. She sucked his tongue into her mouth, moaning too before pulling back, panting as her brain adjusted to the current and very 180'd state of them.

"Sorry, I just…" She said.

"Shut up." He interrupted, a hand grabbing her to pull her roughly and swiftly on top of him. Her body reacted before her brain had the time to catch up, straddled on top of him, her dress riding up as his lips reached for hers, smouldering and direct and controlling. His hands slid up her back then, in tandem. She kissed him hungrily back, her hands tracing his jaw and angling him to her liking.

Before she could even calculate it her hands were roaming for the belt of his pants and he was sucking on her neck like she'd never be anyone else's ever again.

_Truth was that that had been the case long before either had cared to realise..._

She let out a gasp, short and sharp and filled with impulse as he pushed her panties aside and she felt him, growing harder and harder and then unmistakably inside her. She sucked his tongue into her mouth, her nails nearly ripping at each button from the speed that she undid his shirt, the need for her hands to touch at his chest and back and shoulders flaring up inside her with an animal like intention. It was controlled and yet hard, each thrust met with a reply on her end, for every rhythm she controlled he would add another in and before long she couldn't even make out them against the blur of a world around them.

Just...A goal line.

Somehow they were too wrapped up in each other to really look at each other until that point.

It occurred to her, afterwards, that they were both ignoring things. _Things being each other._ They were both wanting and having things. _Things being each other._

But neither was about to acknowledge those things.

_Things__,__ being…_

The real mistake was her trying to end it there.

"This was a...bad idea." She said, panting, as she grabbed for a pillow to cover herself, leaning back into the couch. Her hands flattened out across the leather, her eyes roaming the light peppered ceiling.

Beside her, he copied the action, relaxing into position... "A...very bad idea." He panted, a bemused look on his face.

"So…" She pouted slightly, pushing the air out of her mouth. "What now?" She asked, her eyes still trained on anything but him.

"I…." He dragged on the vowel. "...I don't know." He said, looking about himself. "These pants are clearly ruined." He said, oddly disappointed as he observed the state of his attire.

"I am _not_ taking those to the dry cleaner." She commented, gesturing to him.

He gave her a look then, unceremoniously doing up the fly of his pants, still with slight distaste at the post coital state if him.

He stood up, a vague look on his face. "I'm going to take a shower." he said, looking to her.

She sighed, making to stand. "I should really go. I have to go." She scoured the apartment for her shoes.

"Actually I thought you could... _join me_?" She heard him say behind her.

It knocked her for six; her mouth falling open, before she recovered with a much more stern look about her, turning around to face him. "Harvey... What _are _we doing?" She asked him.

"You need me to draw you another diagram?" He joked, that Specter smile reaching from his lips all the way through his face.

_She blushe__d__ instantly at the remembrance. _

_So that was where this was going..._

"This is not twelve years ago, Harvey. We are _not _twenty five any more. We are not fresh out of a job. In fact we are exactly the _opposite of all of that_."

It was amazing to her her how he could stand there and be so blaze about the whole situation, like nothing monumental had even happened between them.

He shrugged, trying to work her out, before erupting into an exasperated look, his shoulders shaking slightly. He moved towards her then, closing the distance.

"I thought you'd be like this." He said, observing her with a knowing look. "How about...instead of you examining everything," His hands slid comfortably down her arms. She tried not to linger on the immediately soothing feeling. "We just...take it...moment by moment?" He offered, waiting for her answer.

"Wait a second. _**You thought I'd be like this?**_" She frowned, alarm written all over her face. "You...planned this, didn't you?" She accused.

"Of course I did." He said, a slight annoyance at her that she couldn't quite place.

"But," She struggled not to laugh. "You've never planned..._anything_ before?" She said.

It's wasn't her first thought, but somehow it was the most important thought in her head right now.

He...

Harvey Specter,

_The_ Harvey Specter...

Planned Valentine's Day..._**for her**_.

He actually...thought about it.

What they would do.

She flustered immediately. "Harvey. This would all be very romantic if A) We were actually together; B) Not...realistically where we actually_ are_ in each other's lives, and C) Having just had the first sex we appear to have had in over ten years."

"Actually...I didn't expect that that would happen." He said then.

"Could you not have...come to me first? Maybe... Did that thing you don't like doing?"

"What?" He sneered, looking at her with a confused look.

"Talking? About your feelings?" She annunciated, exasperated by his suddenly bone-headed expression.

"Donna. If you haven't already guessed it...I love you." He said then.

_And that was the cherry. Right smack bang on the top of the idiocy of this situation._

She was officially freaked out now.

She tried not to let her worry, in turn worry him.

By the time she'd finished that sentence in her head it was already too late.

"Too much?" He asked.

She nodded slowly, drawing in a breath to calm herself.

"Hey look...if I'd have come to you, and told you. You would have still lied to my face like you have _every other time_. Now, **_I know_**...that _**you love me**_."

"Harvey, I'm not in-" Her weak defence fell under his bold interruption.

"You love me, Donna. A lot. I see it every god damn day in _everything_ you do for me. Mike sees it. Rachel sees it. Jessica gives me a bad time about it. Louis cries at night about it."

She smiled then, his dead panned arrogance laden expression cutting the tension.

He cut the distance between them. "And what we just did back there..." He indicated to the couch, her eyes following reluctantly.

_The scene of the crime..._

"You're a fantastic actress, b_ut you blush bright red when you come,_" He said, his game face besting hers. "And _I know_, that you can't fake something like that."

She measured his stare then, her cheeks warming.

For the first time in her life she had...no defence. Against _him_. Or them. Or anything else.

"So," He said then, bringing her back into the room with his tentative yet roaming hands. "I'm going for a shower. Would you care to join me?" He asked carefully, some what gentlemanly considering how the night had panned out.

_And still, that damn twinkle in his eye..._

The Hard Truth was,

That _he_ had _her_.

From the very second.

And now that he knew the fact,

There was no holding him back.

The jig was finally up.

"Dessert?" She sighed in asking, feeling vanquished, a tired smile on her lips as he gathered her up against him, his hand wrapping in her hair, before he side stepped her, leading her, nay playfully pushing her towards the bathroom, his chin in the crook of her neck.

"Can we have a bath?" She asked.

"We can have..._anything you want_." He answered in between kisses.

_'It's wonderful_

_S'Marvellous_

_That you should care for_

_That you should care _

_For_

_Me.'_

* * *

Notes: Lyrics from Fink's 'Yesterday was hard on all of us' and Julie London's 'S'Marvellous' Ended a little fluffy. I just don't know what to do with these two dumbasses. Their characters need to get on it already it's ridiculous.

This was supposed to be posted on the weekend but my Valentine's was work laden! Always feed the kitty! MWAH A~


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